At some point in your career, you hit a wall.
Not all at once. It builds slowly.
The meetings creep later. The Slack pings come earlier. You start reviewing pull requests at 10pm “just this once” for the third night in a row. It’s not just the hours—it’s the access. The constant availability. The quiet assumption that if someone needs something, you’ll make it work.
And you do, until you can’t anymore.
Eventually, you realize: this isn’t sustainable.
So you try to set a boundary. You tell yourself it’s time. You send the message. You hope it lands.
And... it doesn’t.
Maybe you were too vague.
Maybe you waited too long and set it out of frustration.
Maybe you dropped it into Slack and assumed everyone would remember.
Whatever the reason, it didn’t stick. People kept pushing. You made exceptions. The resentment started to creep back in.
Setting boundaries isn’t just about protecting your time. It’s about protecting your ability to lead. Because if you’re always available, always reactive, and always saying yes, you’re not modeling effectiveness. You’re modeling burnout.
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